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I think with the document design project i’m going to stick to what i know. I could go serrious with that or funny, but i’m leaning funny because with the persona project and fledge i think i’ve been about as serrious as i can be. I could do something like a survival guide or something about music scenes. Alternatively, i could do something about both. I’m leaning towards that idea, because it’d let me address the funny facts like country shows are often way worse in terms of fights than any hardcore show could be due to the fact hardcore shows generally never have anyone over 21 attend so alcohol is a good deal harder to come by.

To be honest i just didn’t get this chapter. It seemed like he was trying to be edgy and forgot to make a point. It’s that same soap box about imagery being used for shock and awe and not deeper more sensual uses. But, the fact is, I already argued against that once so i don’t feel like arguing on it again. The evolution of calvin stickers though seemed to provide an odd insight into how in our era the imagery will actually evolve to meet the desires of those who want to use it, but he didn’t stick with it long enough to even really make a point. Worst chapter of the book by far.

The concept is pretty neat but the author is pretty darn wrong. He’s making mountains out of mole hills with the concept that images are being dumbed down. I’d argue that images are merely being used by everyone, so it’s easy to see lots of “dumb” imagery. The argument i’d make is that one of TIME magizine’s top 100 novels was Watchmen. Watchmen is a comic book. It’s a gritty, adult, and very very deep comic book. But, it’s a comic book. I’d argue that its imagery is not “dumb” but in fact the exact kind of sensual gratification he’s complaining we don’t have exposure to, and i’m sure the editors at TIME would agree with me seeing as they called it one of the best novels right alongside the works “catch 22″ and “insivible man.” Nothing against lunenfeld, but i think he’s not looking for answers along with the problems he finds.

I’m pretty excited about my group. I’ve gotten to know dani and essence fairly well and brook and amanda seem nice. I have no idea what the devil we’re actually going to do with our fledge project though. We went with one of the fledges that i distributed so i know some of the stories and i’m hoping that will help. If not, then oh well, at least my group is awesome.

I feel like Publishing is in many ways very akin to the record industry. Both have a product that humans simply can’t live without, but are hemoraging money. The reason, is that music and text alike are taking a new route. No longer are journals the standard in research, now we use internet databases to search for pdfs. Books even have fallen victim to the rise of the Kindle, Nook, and several other E-Book readers. While Publishing at one time was this huge chunk of our fiction and information, now it feels like much like how the internet robbed record companies of their once monopoly on the format of music, publishers and the physical medium as a whole are forced to find synergy with the digital age or die.

I believe that if he’s ever hit the nail on the head when it comes to sampling our era of information it’s in this chapter. The concept of squeezing more time into a day sums up the time we live in extremely well, from the examples he gives of the lawyer who charges for timezone changes as full hours up to the simple fact that we live in a world where the 24 hour news cycle is deemed as “too slow” for information. He notes we live under the monoarchy of speed and i’d say it’d be hard to argue that from microwave ovens to DSL, we simply want things not now, but three minutes ago.

The biggest thing I think I learned from the reading would easily be the sense of building on each other that the steps brings to the table. I think our generation feels that sometimes trial and error is the default way to avoid problems, but it’s often a lot easier to simply take the time to pre-design and break out a list. If you’re attacking the problems in an order then you’re often attacking the problems will full attention as opposed to just wildly creating something and then returning to hope you made everything work.

Hands down though, the area i need to work on most is content development, I’m the world’s worst to just assume since i use IE and Word that everyone does. I think I need to work on maintaining a sense of Ethos too, because often I find myself wanting to joke around even if it doesn’t exactly fit in. Overall it shouldn’t be tough as long as I go in with the intent to do it.